The best thing about being an Education Consultant is the variety of work that I am doing from one day to the next. Not only is this exciting and stimulating; it also allows you to link concepts and ideas across areas that may otherwise not occur to you. As an example, I am currently working on a number of Inclusion projects, was also putting together some training around children who had experienced trauma and am in the process of further NLP training. I therefore had lots of jargon and terminology in my head linked to inclusion, was putting together activities around understanding the biology behind trauma, whilst I was also using my headspace to consider the impact of reframing. I love the idea and power of reframing.

Reframing, as it would suggest is looking at something differently. Its not looking at the world through rose tinted glasses, however it is realising that when something happens, we attach meaning to it. We can choose to add a different meaning to it or put it in a different frame. 

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

 William Shakespeare

When we think about this in NLP terms, it can really help change our perspective on something and potentially help us to deal with situations much more effectively. For example, rather than thinking ‘I am too old to try something new’, reframing it to think ‘I could bring lots of experience to this new activity’. 

Likewise, I have advised lots of people working with children who have experienced trauma to see their behaviour through a different lens, and in essence this is exactly the same thing. Rather than thinking ‘That child is always looking at ways to be disruptive’, thinking instead ‘What does that child need to stay more focused’. When working with children it can really help to separate the child from the behaviour and see that the behaviour is just communication. It helps us think about what we can do, rather than focusing on what they won’t or in most cases can’t do. 

The idea of reframing therefore is something that I try and apply in both my personal and professional worlds, however it struck me that it isn’t often a discussion we have when talking about inclusion and considering children with special educational needs. I did read an article that talked about outdated language that we have previously used regarding children with special educational needs and disabilities, and like others who read that article it made me question the language we use now and whether one day we will realise that lots of that isn’t ideal either. Hence me considering reframing in this context.

As I’m sure many of us do when thinking about something these days, I grabbed my phone and using my preferred search engine typed in ‘children with special educational needs’ or words to that effect. What immediately caught my attention were the number of negative words that jumped out from the first couple of pages; ‘struggle’, ‘challenge’, ‘difficulties’, ‘problem’, ‘coping’, ‘concerns’ to name but a few, and trust me there were many more. I then consciously looked for more positive words and I found a big fat zero. Obviously had I clicked on the links or looked further I may have found some, however it made me think that as a parent if I had just been told that my child had special educational needs how easy it would be to stick a huge negative frame around the whole thing. I would have to actively and consciously search to look for the positives, and that’s really sad. 

The thing is, our education system is totally built around a perception of the average child, and I believe perception is entirely the right word. When I deliver training around which children could be classed as ‘vulnerable’, once we go through the list most people are left considering a handful of children in their classes who don’t come into this category. Even when we consider what constitutes special educational needs, schools will vary so much regarding who is on their register, because we are comparing children within a very specific context. A child who needs lots of additional support in one school, may manage just fine with a tiny bit of support in another. It all depends on demographics, class sizes, relationships and the list goes on… 

Our mainstream education system also considers passing examinations as the marker of success, and it is these examinations that open doors to each next step in our system. Now I am not entirely against exams, however what I do worry about is that we have just this one marker of success. As a trustee for a Music Service, we have recently been talking lots about progression routes, and again the traditional measure of how good someone is at music comes from assessments and grades. Yet I wonder how many of the most ‘successful’ musicians we can think of have ever been asked what Grades they have achieved if any. This is not saying that those assessments and grades aren’t important or relevant in some fields of music, however what this clearly exemplifies is that we can be successful in areas of music without them and there are other ways of measuring our progression and ability. 

The same is clearly true in society, yet we somehow know this fact and still choose to ignore it. Let’s think about some successful people we know in all sorts of fields; Steven Spielberg, Jamie Oliver, Cher, Sir Richard Branson, Beethoven, Stevie Wonder, Michael Phelps, Ryan Gosling, Tim Burton, Jerry Seinfield…. A seemingly random list of people who have all excelled in their relevant fields, yet all people who would be classed as having a special educational need. According to the information out there these people have dyslexia, sensory impairments, ADHD or Autism, they would all have been children who in school may have required additional support, or in many cases found school difficult because no-one identified that they just needed some additional support. However, what they have all demonstrated is that this alleged ‘need’ didn’t stop them being successful and actually and way more importantly, many of them claim that their ‘need’ was actually what drove them to be as successful as they are. 

Which brings me back to reframing… Who on earth decided that there was only one way of thinking, learning or problem solving? Why do we imagine that there is always a right answer, and that there is only one? I have said it before and I will say it again, we are often far too focused on teaching children the right answers, rather than focusing on teaching children how to solve the problem and I guess this goes one step further than that. If you are dyslexic you are used to being told that you may find reading and writing more challenging, however how often are you congratulated for your ability to alter and create perception, how often do we spend time developing that ability to see patterns or connections, how much do we encourage others to embrace that vivid imagination. All of these are common attributes of dyslexia, evident in some of the famous people I referred to earlier, yet I bet majority of us only think about what a dyslexic may find hard to do when we first consider the term. I don’t think Steven Spielberg was ever told that he couldn’t win those Oscars until he got all his spellings right!

I use the example of dyslexia as it is one example that many of us will have had some experience of however similar examples could be given for all the ‘needs’ I mention here and all the ‘needs’ and ‘disabilities’ we often refer to. It really makes me think about these terms and how helpful they are. It is interesting that we are so focused on what we can’t do, rather than what we can. I love this quote:

“What makes a child gifted and talented may not always be good grades in school, but a different way of looking at the world and learning.”

Chuck Grassley

Where would we be if people didn’t view the world differently? How would we evolve and invent if there was only one right answer? It seems to me that we need to reframe our education system because instead of celebrating children who view the world differently, we instead just spend many years telling them what they can’t do. In some this drives ambition and a desire to be successful in spite of that, however for how many is it just easier to believe what they are told. How many children put a ceiling on their own potential just because they don’t entirely fit the ‘mainstream’ views of success?

I like the idea put forward by Elaine S. Dalton when she said;

“If you desire to make a difference in the world, you must be different from the world.”

If we always do what we’ve always done, we will always get what we have always got – isn’t that what they say? What we need when we think of some of the huge issues the world is facing right now, is people who think differently. People who aren’t constrained by the right answers because they are imaginative and creative enough to know that there are more answers that we have just not found yet. Thinking about climate change as one example, surely, we need people who can visualise solutions, who can’t be pressurised to think in a certain way, who have incredible attention for detail and will spot things that others will overlook. Interesting that these are all attributes not tested in SATs but are often attributes observed in people with autism. 

I could go on and on about this subject, however I think you can see my point and it brings me back to reframing. Let’s be completely radical here and consider whether maybe children don’t have special educational needs or disabilities, maybe the way the world and particularly our education system is set up just creates these needs and disables certain children. I am not being flippant here, and I am not suggesting that we remove support, what I am posing is the question of whether we frame things in such a way that we focus almost entirely on the negative. It then takes incredible parents, skilled and passionate teachers, ambitious coaches and most of all remarkable children to turn those negatives into positives and go on to reach if not smash potential and be successful. 

Wouldn’t it be amazing to see what could happen if we viewed these ‘conditions’, ‘needs’ and ‘diagnoses’ (again all negative words), as positive from the outset? It’s not about ignoring the differences, it’s about seeing difference as a good thing. As I said in a previous blog ‘normal is boring’ (whatever normal is). 

So next time you encounter someone who see things differently to you, rather than assuming that either of you is right or wrong, maybe instead consider what you can learn from each other. The next time a child gives you a completely bizarre answer to a question, before saying ‘no, that’s not quite right’ maybe ask them to explain how their thinking got them there. The next time you are working with a child with a special education need or a disability, see the child first and be curious about how they see the world, rather than assuming they need to see it like you. If we all approached difference as something positive, we wouldn’t even need to talk about inclusion. It would all be so simple if we remembered to just be kind!

#justbekind #becurious #normalisboring #adifferentwayoflookingattheworld